The body temperature of active desert anurans from hyper-arid environment of South America: The reliability of WorldClim for predicted body temperatures in anurans

Abstract

The temperature of anuran activity from arid regions have been poorly studied. In recent years, the emphasis was placed on predicting the impacts of global warming on the fauna of ectotherms in general. Many times future impacts are predicted based on global thermal information (macroscale) but not on an individual scale. We used literature data about body temperature in anurans that inhabit the desert region of the Northwest of Argentina to analyze the role of the elevation, eco-region and substrate temperature on the individual scale. Also, we evaluated the predictive capacity that global environmental variables obtained from WorldClim for this region, and compared them with those of local scale. Our results showed that the activity body temperature of the toads in the arid region of western Argentina strongly influenced by elevation and the substrate temperature on the individual scale. We observed that data of the global scale (WorldClim) can predict the body temperature of the studied amphibians, but with a deviation, not less than 8 °C. According to our results, it is evident that to making reliable predictions of how global warming impacts on amphibians in the region, the environmental temperature data need to be recorded at the local scale (operative temperatures).